INANITION. 431 



of the metamorphosis of tissue, when all solid food is withheld. 

 In reference to this point we will first mention a series of observa- 

 tions made by Boussingault, which are closely connected with those 

 of Letellier, which we have just described. Boussingault's experi- 

 ments were also made on turtle-doves, which were kept for seven 

 days without any solid food ; they lost daily 4'12g of their bodily 

 weight, and 2*696$ (of their weight) of carbon by the respiration, 

 having exhaled daily 3 722$ when fed upon millet. The green, 

 bilious-looking, slimy excrements, with which only a few detached 

 white patches of uric acid were mixed, averaged daily, when dried, 

 0*210 of the weight of the body. The excrements contained 31'95f 

 of carbon, 4*35 of hydrogen, 24*74^ of nitrogen, 28*32f of oxygen, 

 and 16'4O of ash. A bird weighing 187 grammes lost, therefore, 

 daily during its starvation 0*1257 of a gramme of carbon, 0'0l7l of 

 a gramme of hydrogen, 0*0974 of a gramme of nitrogen, and 

 0*11 14 of a gramme of oxygen. Now if \ve assume with Boussin- 

 gault, that dry blood (after the deduction of the ash) contains 54'4- 

 of carbon, 7*5 <f of hydrogen, 15*9 of nitrogen, and 22*2 of 

 oxygen, and that the amount of nitrogen exhaled by the lungs is 

 equal to half of that which is contained in the excrements, it fol- 

 lows that the bird experiences a daily loss of 0*1455 of a gramme 

 of nitrogen, which is equivalent to 0*915 of a gramme of dry blood. 

 In this 0-915 of a gramme of blood there is, however, only 0*498 

 of a gramme of carbon ; and since the bird discharged 2*532 

 grammes of carbon daily in carbonic acid and the excrements, it 

 obviously follows, that 2*034 grammes of the consumed carbon 

 must have been yielded by fat. 



No experiments on the subject of inanition are so worthy of 

 notice as those of Chossat,* whose careful observations were con- 

 tinued for years, and embraced mammals, birds, and amphibia. In 

 twenty-four cases, in which Chossat caused turtle-doves to die 

 from starvation, the greatest daily loss of weight was manifested 

 on twenty-two occasions at about the middle of the experi- 

 ment, and twice on the day in which death occurred (excluding in 

 this calculation the first day in which food was withheld, as some 

 nutrient matter might then be taken up by the body from the con- 

 tents of the intestinal canal). For some hours before death the 

 body underwent no additional loss of weight. Taking the entire 

 loss of weight which the animals suffered from the commencement 

 of the experiment to their death as 1, it appeared that during the 



* Recherches exp^rimentales sur 1'inanition. Paris, 1843. 



